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TOEFL Listening Work Sample
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Background for Listening Section Tasks
Understanding class lectures is a crucial aspect of college
life; by including lectures in TOEFL iBT, we are testing the
candidate’s preparedness to function in an academic environment in
an English-medium university. A TOEFL iBT lecture set consists of
an aural stimulus and multiple-choice questions. The stimulus
presents an excerpt of a lecture that takes place in a university
classroom. Each lecture is heard only once. The content of the
lecture must not assume specialized knowledge in the subject area.
It should be possible to understand the content of the stimulus
based only on what is presented. Test takers are tested on their
understanding of the main ideas, important details, organizational
structure, and implications of the lecture as well as the speaker’s
purpose and attitude. The language of the lecture should include
features that are typical of oral language in an academic setting,
including repetitions, misspeaks, hesitations, sentence fragments,
changing one’s mind, etc.
Sample Listening Lecture Before starting the tasks, please
listen to a sample TOEFL lecture. Each of your tasks will be to
develop part of a TOEFL lecture, so the lecture you will listen to
is longer than the ones you will submit. Sound Sample 1 contains a
one-sentence introduction. Samples 2-5 contain the body of the
lecture.
Double Click the icon to hear Sound Sample 1
Double Click the icon to hear Sound Sample 2
Double Click the icon to hear Sound Sample 3
Double Click the icon to hear Sound Sample 4
Double Click the icon to hear Sound Sample 5
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TOEFL Listening Work Sample
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Instructions for the Listening Section Tasks For this section
you must write portions of two lectures (no visuals needed). You
must complete both tasks. Please complete both tasks in a single
Word document. Name and format your Work Sample following the
instructions at the end of the description of Task 2. For each
lecture, indicate the class for which you are writing the lecture
by including a line preceding the beginning of each lecture worded
as follows: “Listen to part of a lecture in a ________ class.” Fill
in the space with the name of the class.
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TOEFL Listening Work Sample
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Listening—Task 1 “Heredity: The Garden Pea”
Task: Write a portion of a lecture, no more than 250 words in
length, that is based on the source material given and that
provides the necessary information for a listener to correctly
answer the questions below after a single listening. The lecture is
for an introductory-level biology class and should sound as though
it is being given by a university professor who has planned the
material but is speaking somewhat extemporaneously and not simply
reading aloud a printed version of the talk. The lecture should be
monologic: there should be no questions or contributions from
students in the class. Use the included source material as the
basis for the lecture content. The first question below—“What does
the professor mainly discuss?”—tests the overall gist of the
lecture; that is, the answer to this question reflects the
instructional goal of the lecture. For some questions, the word
“nonexplicit” appears next to the question number. This means that
the answer should not be presented explicitly in a single sentence
in the stimulus. Instead, a listener must be able to follow the
information presented across several sentences in order to answer
the question correctly. For other questions, the answer can be
presented in a single sentence, but it can also be presented in
information from several sentences. In all cases the information
should be presented as part of an integrated whole, not as a list
of disconnected discrete points. Since an important listening skill
is being able to distinguish important details from less important
details, the lecture should include content that is not tested; but
tested content should be as salient to a listener, if not more
salient, than untested content. Keep the following in mind.
• The information in the lecture should be
o accessible to an educated nonspecialist (e.g., a first-year
college student),
o understandable without having specific background knowledge of
the topic, and
o understandable in a single hearing (i.e., it is not necessary
to listen more than once in order to answer the questions).
• The information presented needs to be tightly focused around a
specific theme/topic. The professor should have a specific
instructional objective (e.g., completing an explanation).
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TOEFL Listening Work Sample
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Evaluation: The lecture you write will be evaluated on the basis
of a number of factors, including the following.
• The naturalness of the speech and achievement of appropriate
register (speech should be appropriate for a university
professor)
• Whether the information is pitched at an appropriate level of
difficulty for first-year college students with no specialized
knowledge of biology
• How clearly and cohesively the information is developed
• How well the tested information is integrated into a coherent
lecture
• Whether there is sufficient support for a listener to be able
to answer the questions after hearing the lecture only once
Questions for Task 1
1. (nonexplicit) What does the professor mainly discuss? Answer:
Why Mendel used the garden pea in his heredity studies
2. Why did using pea plants for his experiments help Mendel
obtain results relatively quickly?
Answer: Pea plants can produce several generations in one
year.
3. What is a true-breeding variety of a plant? Answer: A variety
that is uniform from one generation to the next
4. (nonexplicit) What feature distinguishes pea plants from most
other flowering plants?
Answer: Pea plants can produce offspring by
self-fertilization.
5. How did Mendel’s experiments differ from earlier experiments
in heredity? Answer: Mendel applied scientific methods to his
experiments.
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TOEFL Listening Work Sample
5
Listening—Task 1 “Heredity: The Garden Pea”
Source Material for Task 1 (Raven, Peter H., and George B.
Johnson. Biology. 4th ed. Dubuque, IA: William C. Brown, 1999.)
Over the next hundred years, Koelreuter’s work was elaborated on by
other investigators. Prominent among them were English gentleman
farmers who were trying to improve varieties of agricultural
plants. In one such series of experiments, carried out in the
1790s, T. A. Knight crossed two true-breeding varieties (varieties
that are uniform from one generation to the next) of the garden
pea, Pisum sativum. One of these varieties had purple flowers, and
the other had white flowers. All of the progeny of the cross had
purple flowers. Among the offspring of these hybrids, however, were
some plants with purple flowers and others, less common, with white
flowers. Just as in Koelreuter’s earlier studies, a trait from one
of the parents was hidden in one generation, only to reappear in
the next. Early geneticists demonstrated that some forms of an
inherited trait (1) can be masked in some generations but may
subsequently reappear unchanged in future generations; (2)
segregate among the offspring of a cross; and (3) are more likely
to be represented than their alternatives. In these deceptively
simple results were the makings of a scientific revolution.
Nevertheless, another century passed before the process of gene
segregation was appreciated properly. Why did it take so long? One
reason was that early workers did not quantify their results. A
numerical record of results proved to be crucial to understanding
the process. Knight and later experimenters who carried out other
crosses with pea plants noted that some traits had a “stronger
tendency” to appear than others, but they did not record the
numbers of the different classes of progeny. Science was young
then, and it was not obvious that the numbers were important.
Mendel and the Garden Pea The first quantitative studies of
inheritance were carried out by Gregor Mendel, an Austrian monk.
Born in 1822 to peasant parents, Mendel was educated in a monastery
and went on to study science and mathematics at the University of
Vienna, where he failed his examinations for a teaching
certificate. He returned to the monastery and spent the rest of his
life there, eventually becoming abbot. In the garden of the
monastery, Mendel initiated a series of experiments on plant
hybridization. The results of these experiments would ultimately
change our views of heredity irrevocably.
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TOEFL Listening Work Sample
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For his experiments, Mendel chose the garden pea, the same plant
that Knight and many others had studied earlier. The choice was a
good one for several reasons. First, many earlier investigators had
produced hybrid peas by crossing different varieties. Mendel knew
that he could expect to observe segregation among the offspring.
Second, a large number of true-breeding varieties of peas were
available. Mendel initially examined 32. Then, for further study,
he selected lines that differed with respect to seven easily
distinguishable traits, such as smoother versus shriveled seeds and
purple versus white flowers, a characteristic Knight had studied.
Third, pea plants are small and easy to grow, and they have a short
generation time. Thus, one can conduct experiments involving
numerous plants, grow several generations in a single year, and
obtain results relatively quickly. A fourth advantage of studying
peas is that the sexual organs of the pea are enclosed within the
flower (see note below). The flowers of peas, like those of most
flowering plants, contain both male and female sex organs.
Furthermore, the gametes produced by the male and female parts of
the same flower, unlike those of many flowering plants, can fuse to
form viable offspring. Fertilization takes place automatically
within an individual flower if it is not disturbed, resulting in
offspring that are the progeny of a single individual. Therefore,
one can either let self-fertilization take place within an
individual flower, or remove the flower’s male parts before
fertilization and introduce pollen from a strain with alternative
characteristics, thus performing cross-fertilization. NOTE:
Structure of the pea flower. In a pea plant flower, the petals
enclose the male anther (containing pollen grains, which give rise
to haploid sperm) and the female stigma and carpel (containing
ovules, which give rise to haploid eggs), ensuring that
self-fertilization will take place unless the flower is disturbed.
A longitudinal section of a flower is shown in this
illustration.
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TOEFL Listening Work Sample
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Listening—Task 2 “Predictably Irrational: The Cost of Zero
Cost”
Task: Write a portion of a lecture, no more than 250 words in
length, that is based on the source material included below and
write four questions (and answers) about the lecture. The questions
should test a listener’s understanding of important points in the
lecture. One of the questions should ask about the overall content
of the lecture (e.g., “What is the lecture mainly about?”, “What
does the professor mainly discuss?”, or “What is the main purpose
of the lecture?”). The lecture can be for either an
introductory-level economics class or an introductory-level
psychology class. It should sound as though it is being given by a
university professor who has planned the material but is speaking
somewhat extemporaneously and not simply reading aloud a printed
version of the talk. The lecture should be monologic: there should
be no questions or contributions from students in the class. The
information in the lecture should fit together in an integrated
whole; information should not be presented as a list of
disconnected discrete points. Since an important listening skill is
being able to distinguish important details from less important
details, the lecture should include content that is not tested in
the questions you ask; but tested content should be salient to a
listener. Keep the following in mind.
• The information in the lecture should be accessible to an
educated nonspecialist who has only common background knowledge of
the topic, and it should be understandable in a single hearing.
• The information presented needs to be tightly focused around a
specific
theme/topic. The professor should have a specific instructional
objective (e.g., completing an explanation).
• The questions you write should test important, salient
information in the lecture;
that is, they should reflect what the professor might hope that
students understand and remember from the lecture.
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TOEFL Listening Work Sample
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Evaluation: The lecture you write will be evaluated on the basis
of a number of factors, including the following.
• The naturalness of the speech and achievement of appropriate
register (speech should be appropriate for a university
professor)
• Whether the information is pitched at an appropriate level of
difficulty for first-year college students with no specialized
knowledge of economics or psychology
• How clearly and cohesively the information is developed
• How well the tested information is integrated into a coherent
lecture
• Whether there is sufficient support for a listener to be able
to answer the questions after hearing the lecture only once
The questions you write will be evaluated on the basis of
• the clarity of the wording of the question and of the answer
and
• the importance of the point being tested.
Work Sample Format Name your work sample document using the
following convention: TOEFL_Listening_your last name_your first
name.doc. For example, TOEFL_Listening_Doe_Jane.doc. Indicate the
task number and the page number of the task on every page (i.e.,
Task 2, page 2).
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TOEFL Listening Work Sample
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Listening—Task 2 “Predictably Irrational: The Cost of Zero
Cost”
Source Material for Task 2 (Ariely, Dan. Predictably Irrational:
The Hidden Forces that Shape Our Decisions. New York:
HarperCollins, 2008.) The portion of the material highlighted in
gray is provided only for context—this material should not be
included in the lecture proper. The cost of zero cost Zero has had
a long history. The Babylonians invented the concept of zero; the
ancient Greeks debated it in lofty terms (how could something be
nothing?); the ancient Indian scholar Pingala paired zero with the
numeral 1 to get double digits; and both the Mayans and the Romans
made zero part of their numeral systems. But zero really found its
place about AD 498, when the Indian astronomer Aryabhata sat up in
bed one morning and exclaimed, “Sthanam sthanam dasa gunam”—which
translates, roughly, as “Place to place in 10 times in value.” With
that, the idea of decimal-based place-value notation was born. Now
zero was on a roll: It spread to the Arab world, there it
flourished; crossed the Iberian Peninsula to Europe (thanks to the
Spanish Moors); got some tweaking from the Italians; and eventually
sailed the Atlantic to the New World, where zero ultimately found
plenty of employment (together with the digit 1) in a place called
Silicon Valley. So much for a brief recounting of the history of
zero. But the concept of zero applied to money is less clearly
understood. In fact, I don’t think it even has a history.
Nonetheless, FREE! has huge implications, extending not only to
discount prices and promotions, but also to how FREE! can be used
to help us make decisions that would benefit ourselves and society.
If FREE! were a virus or a subatomic particle, I might use an
electron microscope to probe the object under the lens, stain it
with different compounds to reveal its nature, or somehow slice it
apart to reveal its inner composition. In behavioral economics we
use a different instrument, however, one that allows us to slow
down human behavior and examine it frame by frame, as it unfolds.
As you have undoubtedly guessed by now, this procedure is called an
experiment.
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TOEFL Listening Work Sample
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In one experiment, Kristina Shampanier (a PHD student at MIT),
Nina Mazar (a professor at the University of Toronto), and I went
into the chocolate business. Well, sort of. We set up a table at a
large public building and offered two kinds of chocolates—Lindt
truffles and Hershey’s Kisses. There was a large sign above our
table that read, “One chocolate per customer.” Once the potential
customers stepped closer, they could see the two types of chocolate
and their prices.* For those of you who are not chocolate
connoisseurs, Lindt is produced by a Swiss firm that has been
blending fine cocoas for 160 years. Lindt’s chocolate truffles are
particularly prized—exquisitely creamy and just about irresistible.
They cost about 30 cents each when you buy them in bulk. Hershey’s
Kisses, on the other hand, are good little chocolates, but let’s
face it, they are rather ordinary: Hershey cranks out 80 million
Kisses a day. In Hershey, Pennsylvania, even the streetlamps are
made in the shape of the ubiquitous Hershey’s Kiss. So what
happened when the “customers” flocked to our table? When we set the
price of a Lindt truffle at 15 cents and a Kiss at one cent, we
were not surprised to find that our customers acted with a good
deal of rationality: they compared the price and quality of the
Kiss with the prices and quality of the truffle, and then made
their choice. About 73 percent of them chose the truffle and 27
percent chose the Kiss. Now we decided to see how FREE! might
change the situation. So we offered the Lindt truffle for 14 cents
and the Kisses free. Would there be a difference? Should there be?
After all, we had merely lowered the price of both kinds of
chocolate by one cent. But what a difference FREE! made. The humble
Hershey’s Kiss became a big favorite. Some 69 percent of our
customers (up from 27 percent before) chose the FREE! Kiss, giving
up the opportunity to get the Lindt truffle for a very good price.
Meanwhile, the Lindt truffle took a tumble; customers choosing it
decreased from 73 to 31 percent. What was going on here? First of
all, let me say that there are many times when getting FREE! items
can make perfect sense. If you find a bin of free athletic socks at
a department store, for instance, there’s no downside to grabbing
all the socks you can. The critical issue arises when FREE! becomes
a struggle between a free item and another item—a struggle in which
the presence of FREE! leads us to make a bad decision. For
instance, imagine going to a sports store to buy a pair of white
socks, the kind with a nicely padded heel and a gold toe. Fifteen
minutes later you’re leaving the store, not with the socks you came
in for, but with a cheaper pair that you don’t like at all (without
a padded heel and gold toe) but that came in a package with a FREE!
second pair. This is a case in
* We posted the prices so that they were visible only when
people got close to the table. We did this because we wanted to
make sure that we did not attract different types of people in the
different conditions—avoiding what is called self-selection.
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TOEFL Listening Work Sample
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which you gave up a better deal and settle for something that
was not what you wanted, just because you were lured by the FREE!
To replicate this experience in our chocolate experiment, we told
our customers that they could choose only a single sweet—the Kiss
or the truffle. It was an either-or decision, like choosing one
kind of athletic sock over another. That’s what made the customers’
reaction to the FREE! Kiss so dramatic: Both chocolates were
discounted by the same amount of money. The relative price
difference between the two was unchanged—and so was the expected
pleasure from both. According to standard economic theory (simple
cost-benefit analysis), then, the price reduction should not lead
to any change in the behavior of our customers. Before, about 27
percent chose the Kiss and 73 percent chose the truffle. And since
nothing had changed in relative terms, the response to the price
reduction should have been exactly the same. A passing economist,
twirling his cane and espousing conventional economic theory, in
fact, would have said that since everything in the situation was
the same, our customers should have chosen the truffles by the same
margin of preference.* And yet here we were, with people pressing
up to the table to grab our Hershey’s Kisses, not because they had
made a reasoned cost-benefit analysis before elbowing their way in,
but simply because the Kisses were FREE! How strange (but
predictable) we humans are! This conclusion, incidentally, remained
the same in other experiments as well. In one case we priced the
Hershey’s Kiss at two cents, one cent, and zero cents, while
pricing the truffle correspondingly at 27 cents, 26 cents, and 25
cents. We did this to see if discounting the Kiss from two cents to
one cent and the truffle from 27 cents to 26 cents would make a
difference in the proportion of buyers for each. It didn’t. But,
once again, when we lowered the price of the Kiss to free, the
reaction was dramatic. The shoppers overwhelmingly demanded the
Kisses. We decide that perhaps the experiment had been tainted,
since shoppers may not feel like searching for change in a purse or
backpack, or they may not have any money on them. Such an effect
would artificially make the free offer seem more attractive. To
address this possibility, we ran other experiments at one of MIT’s
cafeterias. In this setup, the chocolates were displayed next to
the cashier as one of the cafeteria’s regular promotions and the
students who were interested in the chocolates simply added them to
the lunch purchase, and paid for them while going through the
cashier’s line. What happened? The students still went
overwhelmingly for the FREE! option.
* For a more detailed account of how a rational consumer should
make decisions in these cases, see the appendix to this
chapter.
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